PART 1 | The Concubine Who Became China's ONLY Empress Regnant? | Wu Zetian

Wu Zetian is a hard woman to pin down. Due to her own outpouring of disinformation during her lifetime, the picture we have of her is not actually the real her. We can catch only possible glimpses of the woman she really was. But we can learn a lot from how she chose to present herself and how her enemies chose to present her. This video attempts to piece together what we know into a comprehensive picture of her early years to try and see if we can peer past the veils of what she wanted us to see to the real person underneath. Was she the monstrous demoness her enemies presented her as? Was she actually a pawn in someone else's game? Was she a misunderstood figure? Or was she all of these? She began life around AD 625 at the same time that the Anglo-Saxon period was in full flourish in Britain, and the Byzantine Empire was busy trying to recapture parts of Europe. She was the fourth child of Wu Shi Hou, a former lumber merchant, and the second child of his second wife, Lady Yang, who, unlike conventions of the time for a second wife, who was normally younger, was only a couple of years younger than her husband. Little is known about the practicalities of life for Wu, but she will have enjoyed a middle-class upbringing going by her father's occupation and the fact he was appointed as a governor in Lijiu. We don't actually know her birth name as it was never recorded, but after her marriage she kept her patronomic family name, so that's why we know her as Wu. And the fact we know this about her father is because one of those legendary stories about Wu from later histories documents an event at this time. Around 627, when she was still a toddler, a famed and respected fortune teller known as Yuan Tiangang, who read faces, was on his way to see the emperor and stopped to stay with Wu Shi Hou's family. He read the face of Lady Yang and proclaimed she had the face of someone who would bear a noble child. Shi Hou's two sons were given the predictable but dull observations that they would likely become provincial governors. The eldest daughter, Helan, was told she would make an honourable marriage but would not bring honour to her husband. And finally, Tiangang stopped at Wu, who was dressed in boy's clothing and being held by a nursemaid. The aspect of a man, he said. The countenance of a dragon and the neck of a phoenix, resembling that of the legendary ruler Faxi, indicators of a most celebrated individual, he stated. Adding, while not apparently realising she was a girl, if this were only a girl, she could be the ruler of the empire. Obviously, if the event even really happened, it's highly unlikely the predictions were this on point or that they would have been recorded in such detail. But the fact it was written down in an approved history for Wu shows she wanted to make a big deal of this portent of destiny, that she was always intended to rule China, that the decision came from a higher power and was therefore not something anyone could really grumble about. The Emperor Kaizong of Tang was by this point 22 years old, well known for being gallant, brave, a strong fighter who had personally battled over every inch of China and for being a wise and frugal administrator. However, a decade later in his 30s, his demeanour had changed somewhat. His old war wounds now bothered him, the borders of his empire were constantly still at war and he was worried by the fact his eldest son and heir was rumoured to be homosexual and preferred the customs of And in 1636, he also had to deal with personal grief as his consort, the Empress Wende, died in that year. As a result, already having many children with many royal concubines, Kaizong increasingly sought comfort with his other wives. It was around this time that Wu, now aged around 14, was invited to the palace. Unusually for the time, she was well educated as her parents had encouraged her to read and pursue many topics, including music, calligraphy, literature, history, politics and other governmental affairs. This was highly unusual for the time period and again calls up whether or not this is completely true as we consider the sources. However, it is true that Wu was highly educated and cultured when she arrived at the palace and it may well have been that her parents were simply somewhat modern for when they were alive. They had already bucked convention by Wu's father not marrying a younger woman for his second wife after all. A year earlier, Wu's father had died and it's highly likely her mother was ensuring her daughters were taken care of as much as possible. The eldest daughter, Helan, was married to a court official and sending Wu to the palace would have also ensured she was at least taken care of in the most basic respects, leaving only the youngest sister at home with their grieving mother. Lady Yang would not have high hopes for her daughter in regards to how far she might rise through the ranks however. As detailed by historian Jonathan Clements, the emperor had one principal wife who was the mother of his legitimate heirs, the empress consort, followed by four auxiliary wives with titles such as the noble lady, the pure lady, the virtuous lady and the good lady. Then there were six secondary ladies below them, the so-called elegance of the third grade, the beauties of the fourth grade and then the nine talents in the fifth grade of which Wu was now a part. Below this were three even lower grades of ladies so the chances of Taizong ever actually meeting Wu that often, much less being taken with her in any special way, were almost non-existent. However, she must have in order for him to give her the nickname of fair flatterer, a reference to a popular song of the time as much as a commentary on her beauty. Women of the Tang dynasty were considered beautiful if they were overweight with very pale skin, round faces, small mouths and large almond-shaped eyes so this gives us some idea of what Wu looked like. These ladies did not sit around waiting for the emperor's attention however. The inner palace was where the emperor was the only male resident, attended by eunuchs and his wives and concubines. The top wives probably did sit around painting their faces, gossiping about one another, dancing and playing instruments but while the eunuchs were in charge of the day-to-day running of the palace, the other ladies would all have been expected to do jobs and Wu's rank were likely to have been maids in charge of bedding and linen but this was a good opportunity to put them in the eyeline of the emperor even if Wu was still competing with several other teenage girls. But there is a story from this time that she was apparently working in the paddock when the emperor was there trying to tame one of his horses. Wu apparently was brave enough to speak up and remark she would tame the horse if given an iron whip, an iron hammer and a dagger. She said she would first whip it and if that didn't work she would hit its head with the hammer and if this failed she would slit its throat. The emperor apparently laughed at this. The whole story whether real or imagined shows again how Wu wanted to be shown years later. There is a certain sense of fate or inevitability about the scene that Wu was destined to rise through the ranks due to the emperor's delight in her personality and that in itself is again telling as such hostile behavior would have been considered unbecoming in a young lady and yet here is presented as desirable in Wu and yet she might have still remained at the bottom of the pile except that there was a shift in the emperor's personal family. His eldest legitimate son Prince Cheng Tian had taken to camping outside in the palace grounds in the manner of their Turkish enemies roasting sheep and eating them with a single knife rejecting the pompous rigidity of court protocol. His tutors were able to do little other than give him verbal reprimands and many began to eye up one of the In 1643 everything began to go very wrong for Cheng Tian as he had fallen in love with a 13 year old dancing boy who he had an affair with followed by his father executing the poor boy as a punishment. A horrific event all around. Instead of having the desired effect of making his son behave Cheng Tian instead began to plot against his father and managed to gather together a younger brother and some disgruntled nobles. At the same time another of Taizong's sons Prince Zhi was also planning a revolt. He had been amassing a private army after an uncle reminded him his own father had become emperor after killing off several brothers. His tutor wrote a letter to the emperor to both inform him of what was happening and to beg clemency for Zhi's actions but the prince bumped him off before he made it to the capital. Once the news got out Zhi decided to just go for it and declared war on his father and brothers. He was swiftly dealt with, his residence left burning by the emperor's forces and was sent to the capital in disgrace. And he might have got away with it had it not been for one of his co-conspirators who revealed all in exchange for mercy. It turned out they had also been part of Cheng Tian's plan and so gave away people on both sides. Taizong was horrified at how deep it ran within his own palace and a purge followed of four princes. Some invited to privately commit suicide, others sent with no titles or wealth to the frontiers of China where they perished fairly quickly. Administrators, retainers, generals and most importantly for our story the wives and concubines of the inner palace. Taizong didn't have the women killed as tradition dictated but he did still banish them and as one of those who was not involved this allowed a vacuum for Wu to move ahead. She was now 17 and especially as her beauty would later be famed probably visited the emperor's bed more than once. However she would downplay this later mostly because she ended up marrying his son. So it's understandable Wu would want this to be a secret. Equally it's possible she simply remained little more than a maid but she still would have come into contact with the emperor's new heir Prince Gaozong. Although he had older brothers none of them were sons of the late emperor's Wendy and he enjoyed support from many of the emperor's closest advisors and nobles as a result. Either way the shy prince would have had ample opportunity to see and even talk to Wu. He was married at some point in his teens to crown princess Wang later to become emperor's consort but also had an affair with Wu. Her later enemies would allude to this but at the time it was nothing more than palace gossip. Paizong grew increasingly sick from his old wounds and finally died on the 10th of July 649. Gaozong was created emperor and all those concubines who had not given the previous emperor a son including Wu were sent to Ganye temple to shave their heads and become Buddhist nuns. For the ambitious 22 year old Wu it's not likely she fancied following through on this plan. Luckily for her empress Wang as she was now known was unknowingly about to provide a way back to the palace while simultaneously sealing her own fate. Wang had not given birth to any sons so far and her husband favored one of his concubines Zhao who did have a son with him. On top of this having not yet given birth to a son Wang had been forced to adopt one of the emperor's other sons His mother was an extremely low-ranking concubine who would have been grateful for her son's rise through the ranks and so Wang hoped to gain a loyal follower while improving her shaky position safely. The story went that one day while visiting Ganye temple Gaozong caught sight of Wu shaven headed and weeping. However there are already problems with this story in that the temple is hard to discover in historical sources and yet supposedly was large enough for 122 women to be sent there after Taizong's death. On top of this when Taizong became emperor he didn't send his father's concubines off to temples unless they wanted to go and allowed most of them to simply go home. Gaozong famously soft-hearted and easily swayed is unlikely to have been cold enough to Added to this is the fact sources stress it was a buddhist temple and yet buddhism didn't take off as a religion until Empress Wu was in power herself. This suggests the whole thing is a story crafted later in her reign to present her as both a dutiful servant of both emperors and a tragic but beautiful figure. The most damning evidence is the fact she would have needed to shave off her hair and yet just two years later her hair was once again an incredible seven feet long supposedly. Long hair was a mark of beauty and nobility in the Tang period as it needed to be long in order to create the elaborate knots and hairstyles of the period. The whole story can be made much simpler if we assume the most likely thing that happened was that Wu never shaved her hair at all but was sent to seclusion at the temple to wait for an opportune moment to return to her royal lover. But what makes all of this even more interesting is that Empress Wang would be instrumental in Wu's return to court. As the empress had few friends and felt under threat from consort Cha she saw in Gao Zhang's infatuation with Wu a way to turn him away from her main rival. Wu was the perfect distraction from Cha's charms and the empress had her secretly installed back in the palace as one of her own ladies-in-waiting. Apparently Wu was already pregnant with the emperor's child, a son who would be named Li Hong and with his birth her true identity was revealed. Far from shunning her Empress Wang had her elevated from a mere talent to a concubine in the second grade, concubine of the luminous demeanor. In the meantime her plan worked in that Gao Zhang seems to have lost interest in Cha and if Wu put a foot wrong the empress felt secure in her position as prime wife. For her part Wu was a talented actress and schemer and she made sure to befriend the other ladies in the palace. If the empress sent her a gift she shared it with the others and she was careful to always be flattering and humble to Empress Wang. In reality she was carefully manipulating the emperor's feelings towards her. By the end of 656 she had given birth to either three or four of Gao Zhang's children. By this point Cha had become so desperate that she actually sought help from her rival Empress Wang. Finally realizing the danger she had put herself in the empress joined forces with the consort and made accusations against Wu to the emperor. But Gao Zhang was so enamored with Wu that he refused to hear a word said against her and instead the empress and Cha fell out of favor with him. Wu herself had responses to many of the accusations that were backed up by other ladies of the court as she had garnered their friendships. But in 1654 an incident was to happen that would create a scandal of unrivaled proportions. Wu had just given birth to a baby daughter the emperor's newest child and it was customary for the empress to visit the child and Wu as overseer at the inner palace. When she arrived Wu was not in her chambers only her handmaids were. Wang picked up the baby and played with it for a moment before pressing her cheek to the girls and placing her back in her cradle then she left. Gao Zhang came to visit his new daughter shortly afterwards with Wu and they went over to the cradle only to find their child was dead. Hysterical Wu demanded to know who had last touched the child from her maids when they admitted it was the empress she immediately accused her of murdering the baby. A myth from Wu's enemies told that it was actually Wu herself who killed her child hoping to use the death to implicate Wang but going by how she tried to avoid harming her children in years to come again this seems full of hyperbole. It's more likely this was a tragic cop death but it was one that could be used to Wu's advantage especially as Gao Zhang was there in person to see it happen. As there was no solid proof it would be difficult to implicate the It would be easier if she was simply demoted and removed from the palace but with the excuse of the fact she had not provided the emperor with a legitimate male heir and in her place Gao Zhang could place Wu as his prime wife. However they needed the backing of several ministers and they attempted to butter up Gao Zhang's chief minister Changsun Wuji his maternal uncle. They attended a party with a veritable cellar full of wine and gifts including a portrait of him but every time the subject was brought up of Wang being replaced Changsun ignored it. Unable to wear him down even with visits from Lady Yang Wu turned her attention to what she did best winning alliances with those disaffected at court. She targeted men whose connection to royal family was through women mostly through those who were married to half-sisters and sisters of Gao Zhang. The crackling tensions between older members of Tai Zhang's court and the newer members of Gao Zhang's began to burst into flame and accusations flew thick and fast some even ending in the deaths of court officials. In a desperate attempt to win back her place Empress Wang was convinced by her mother in the summer of 655 to turn to sorcery although most histories agree she was blameless. Either way it was a disaster for Wang and her family who were cast out of the palace but still she remained empress. To get around the annoying technicality of also not being able to even replace one of his auxiliary wives for Wu Gao Zhang instead created a new grade of wife beneath the empress but above all others known as imperial concubine. She was the only one who would ever hold the title and this was already more than the 14 year old Wu could have expected on arrival at the palace but it wasn't the end. The enemy of someone's enemy is their friend and Wu and Gao Zhang were about to gain an ally in the form of one of Changsun's enemies. Li Yifu was lucky enough to come across the correspondence from Changsun to the emperor suggesting Li Yifu be sent to some god forsaken far away province. He preempted the message instead arranging to be attending on the emperor as soon as possible and he presented Gao Zhang with his own petition to have Empress Wang demoted and replaced with Wu. Gao Zhang of course leapt at the opportunity promising Li Yifu a promotion and those who opposed Wu had to come around to the fact she would soon be their empress. But the debates rattled on between the emperor and his ministers until finally one of the oldest and most trusted of his statesmen who had not yet spoken answered one day when asked about the matter. This is a family matter we should not interfere. The change of perspective on the matter meant that suddenly ordinary people began to wonder why they were so bothered about who their emperor married. Of course this was a disingenuous argument as the role of empress consort was highly politically charged. Younger advisors began to liken the matter to that of a farmer upgrading his wife as he made more money and grew older reasoning why shouldn't their emperor change wives in order to ensure legitimate heirs if commoners could do it. By late 655 those in opposition had left court or had been sent away to far-flung corners of China. In November Gao Zhang publicly stated that Empress Wang and Cao had been caught plotting against the throne and had planned to poison him. Their families were sent away in disgrace and the women were imprisoned in a single room with only a small gap in a door to put food through. A completely fabricated history was made up for Wu that she had in fact not been part of Taizong's consorts but that she had waited on Gao Zhang's mother Empress Wendy. Impossible not least because Wendy had died before Wu ever entered the palace. On top of this it was said that Taizong himself had personally suggested Wu and Gao Zhang marry and she become empress. Even those who had been against her now had no option but to acknowledge her as Gao Zhang's chief wife and the woman who would be their empress. Even her father now deceased was posthumously raised to a duke and many members of her family were given titles and lands. Wu did not wait long to start carrying out her revenge. Her first move was to sweetly suggest to her husband who was about as politically minded as a dog being distracted with a stick that two of his advisors who had vehemently opposed her position be rewarded for their loyalty to their ministerial roles. He thought she was being lovely. The two ministers were smart enough to recognize they were being set up and desperately pleaded to be allowed to retire but the emperor would hear none of it. But worse was still to come for the Still in their squalid conditions, Gao Zhang one day came across the pavilion where they were kept. It's possible he didn't actually know what had happened to them and he was surprised to see how they were living with no clean clothes, no servants, no luxuries of any kinds like baths. The two women pleaded with Gao Zhang to reconsider their punishment and their hearts must have left when two days later they heard the bricks covering the door being pulled away. However it was in fact men who worked for Wu who had come for them and they were informed they would each receive a hundred lashes, a punishment designed to kill them. The two poor women were then subjected to a horrible death anyway after their punishment in which their hands and feet were cut off, their limbs broken and they were left to slowly die in vats of wine. Wu was now in the strongest possible position yet. She was empress, her eldest son Li Hong was heir to the throne, her main female rivals were dead and she was pregnant with a third or fourth child who would be yet another son. Those who had supported her such as Li Yifu got away with scandals that surrounded him possibly murdering a prison governor who he had bribed to set free a female prisoner Li Yifu fancied and those who opposed Wu were met with swift retribution. In 657 two of the emperor's ministers Han Yuan and Lai Ji the two nobles who had begged to be allowed to retire from court made the mistake of petitioning for the exiled Qiu Sulian to return. They found themselves accused of being mixed up in a plot to revolt with Sulian although it's likely all three were blameless and Wu was behind it. All three were sent even further away into the provinces with the explicit order never to return to the capital. In 659 Wu had an opportunity to be rid of yet another who had not supported her claim. She had never forgotten Chang San Wuji's refusal to support her claim as empress and she made her move when two lower level officials Wei Jifang and Li Chao were accused of forming a secret society. There is no mention of what this really was it could have just been a drinking club but the men were tortured for information. It was severe enough that Wei Jifang committed suicide and the investigator put in charge of it all decided suicide would only have happened if the man really had something to hide. He accused both Jifang and Chao of being part of a treasonous plot masterminded by Chang San and the emperor took this at face value. It was a sign the old courtier's ways had come crashing down and the younger nobles who sided with Wu and Gao Zong were on the rise. Xu Jingkang claimed there was no time to provide all the evidence of which there was tons he claimed the emperor had to move quickly before he faced a revolt. Chang San was forced into exile like all the others but when there was also forced to commit suicide but by 660 Gao Zong's health was failing him. He suffered headaches, dizziness, loss of vision and seizures. This is now generally thought to have been down to either a series of strokes, hypertension or a mixture of both. He began to increasingly rely on Wu at first to simply read him official court documents. On the surface this doesn't seem that impressive until we consider the fact this meant the emperor while he had the last ruling on what he was told now had to listen to Wu's words and how she presented them. This held the real power but more than this her contemporary critics might have had another argument for why they disliked her hold over Gao Zong. Weirdly it involves sex and monogamy. At the time Chinese medicine recommended that an emperor needed to have sex with multiple partners not only so no single concubine had power over him by having the majority of his children but also because of the theories behind the female essence Yin and the male essence Yang. It was believed that the female essence could heal males if the woman orgasmed and the man did not therefore multiple women having sex with Gao Zong would in theory have cured him but Wu seems to have dominated his time in the bedroom. Although there is some anecdotal evidence she may have shared him with other women while she was present and this would have led to accusations that she was taking too much of his essence while not allowing the Yin of his other wives to heal him. Obviously it all sounds like nonsense to our modern understanding of sex and biology but for Wu this could at least be part of the reason she was disliked as she was seen as preventing the emperor from being cured by being monogamous. Wu's power over Gao Zong waned when she wasn't present such as when she had to disappear into the palace to give birth. During the birth of her youngest child in 664 Princess Taipan some disgruntled advisors took the opportunity to try and have Wu removed. They convinced the emperor that she had admitted a Taoist priest to her chambers and that he was performing sorcery. If there was any truth to some kind of spiritual ritual being carried out it was likely in response to the fact she was pregnant and due to give birth but with the emperor in such ill health it was easy to hint that perhaps Wu was behind it. Gao Zong lost his temper and already had precedent in place for if an empress committed witchcraft and how to remove one. He was in the middle of writing out the decree to have Wu demoted from her position when she appeared and pelted him with fury. After it was established she was innocent she turned everything around on Gao Zong and had a go at him for not trusting her. Gao Zong far from his earlier bravery at having his chief wife removed pleaded with her to forgive him and blamed everything on the advisor who had brought him the news. The advisor was thrown in prison his family enslaved and their riches removed and Gao Zong's former heir who had been behind the attempt to remove Wu was forced to kill himself. Interestingly the daughter of this advisor Shang Guan Huan'er would herself work her way up to become Wu's most trusted aid and a political force in her own right. Wu was now more powerful for having removed yet more of her enemies but more than this it was impossible for Gao Zong to now ever argue against his wife with any real effort again. Whenever the emperor held court something traditionally made up entirely of men Wu would hide behind a curtain or screen so nothing was secret from her. She began to control the positions of the court and as older advisors died they were replaced by younger ones loyal to her. There were occasions when Gao Zong's illness would again render him unable to carry out his duties at court and this time Wu would simply sit in his place. No decision was made by the emperor without first seeking her approval and this led to the pair being called the two sages. Wu realized she could not get pregnant again if she was to maintain control over her husband and she appears to have started tolerating short-term relationships between Gao Zong and some of his other concubines. She even sent away her half-brothers to far-flung areas of China never to be seen or heard from again in the capital. For those who didn't know her family well it looked as though she was being a good empress and not allowing her family to influence her too much at court. In actual fact she had never got on with her two half-brothers and they often insulted her and her mother. Her grasp on total power was almost complete but Wu had one final masterpiece to add to show to the world that she was in control. The religious ceremony known as the Feng Shan. This was a ceremony that was rarely carried out due to its enormous expense. It involved the emperor traveling up on Mount Tai in eastern China to give sacrifices at the foot and summit. It was only to be conducted once the empire was considered secure prosperous and content. This was because the sacrifices rather than being actual goods in some form were the emperor's achievements and successes spoken aloud carved onto tablets and buried. If there was even a hint of the emperor's domains crumbling and he invoked the Feng Shan it was thought it would bring great misfortune and chaos down on everyone. But in early 666 urged on by Wu their ceremony was scheduled despite the emperor hardly being well enough to move around the palace. The whole court had to sustain itself as stressing the local population could lead to their annoyance affecting the ceremony. Witnesses from all the known world needed to attend and Gao Zong and Wu spent a few days at the foot of the mountain first relaxing and then in seclusion from all others. The first sacrifices were to be made at the foot of the mountain to alert the spirits to what was coming as if as Clements points out they hadn't already noticed the weeks of building work on the mountain to prepare for the ceremony. The emperor then had to ascend the slope on foot which must have been difficult in Gao Zong's condition followed by his entourage. At the summit he then had to give yet more sacrifices and after that bury several heavy jade tablets inscribed with his successes. These were buried in a stone coffin with ceremonial earth flung over in order to leave the mountain taller than when they arrived. However there would be one new change. The details for the ceremony were somewhat hazy to start with as it hadn't been done that often and the last one had been more than 600 years before. Wu decided to argue that it had in fact never been done properly before. She said that the mountain represented the male element the yang and therefore it made perfect sense for the men to go up the mountain and for the emperor to give sacrifices there. But the earth in other words the foot of the mountain was represented by yin the female element and should therefore be carried out by the women and herself as empress. Why she said would the spirits of empresses including Gao Zong's own mother Huan Di appear before male ministers. On top of this she knew there was little known about the true nature of the ritual and many reluctantly agreed that most religious ceremonies were split into male and female. Wu impressively argued that had the previous dynasties done the ritual correctly their dynasties would not have come to an end. Ladies were brought out in the form of the emperor's female servants, wives of the attendees and eunuchs held up parasols and silk screens alongside the women as they made symbolic sacrifices of wine and food while singing the emperor's praises. It was the height of Wu's rise to the top so far and she had now risen to a place no other woman had been before in China. Far from being a mere consort competing with other wives and worrying about her looks and airs, Wu was an equal to Gao Zong in a way she shouldn't have been. She had now inserted herself into a male dominated ceremony, was already the real power behind the throne and she had ensured her sons were the main heirs to the throne with little competition from any other women. It was a long way from being the middle daughter of a middle class family unknown to the palace and it wouldn't be long before her power would grow beyond even that she now held. Join me next week as we look at how Wu used her control and regal power to gain the throne firstly for her sons and then for herself. If you enjoyed this video don't forget to like and subscribe so you don't miss any new documentaries.